The Secret of Spandau (40 page)

It was a crucial moment in the battle of wills. Hess leaned towards Red as if about to pass on a confidence, and instead stood up stiffly and took a few steps across the cell. He muttered inaudibly in front of his chart of the moon, as if a crisis was upon him. Then he turned slowly and looked at Red in a different way, sizing him up. He sighed nervously and rubbed the back of his neck. He had come to a decision. ‘Herr …'

‘Goodbody.'

‘Would you be willing to put your life at risk for this story?'

‘I already have.'

‘No. A bigger risk than you have taken already?'

There was no doubt what he meant. Cal and Edda Zenk had died for being taken into his confidence. Red nodded.

‘Then I will tell you. Twenty years ago, I wrote my memoirs on scraps of paper and had them passed secretly to Fraulein Zenk, whom I knew and could trust. She was to type them and take a copy to Beer Verlag, the Munich publishers, with an instruction from me that the book should not appear until I was released, or until I died. It cleared up all these so-called mysteries.'

‘The deal with Churchill?' Red could scarcely contain his excitement. A manuscript!

‘More,' Hess answered cryptically. ‘Last week a letter was addressed to me by the new chairman at Beer Verlag. He had found the typescript in the office safe, and inadvisedly he wrote to me about it. Do you know why I say inadvisedly?'

‘It got you into trouble?'

‘As I told you, my letters are now stopped. But it was far worse for Herr Beer. His publishing house was burned down and he died in the fire.'

Red's eyes widened. ‘Another death! How did you hear about this?'

‘I read it in my newspaper,' Hess answered prosaically. ‘Not everything escapes my attention, Herr Goodbody.'

‘You suspect the KGB?'

Hess clicked his tongue as if to dismiss the question as superfluous. ‘Naturally, I became anxious about Fraulein Zenk. These people are extremely thorough. I knew they would go looking for the original manuscript, my scraps of paper.'

‘The proof that the memoir was genuine.'

‘They would try to trace the typist. To guard against such a possibility, I had instructed Fraulein Zenk to deposit the manuscript in a Swiss Bank. I thought it would be secure there, but I worried about her safety.' He allowed a rare glimpse of his personal situation. ‘When people outside take risks on your behalf, your feeling of helplessness in prison is hard to endure. Stupidly, I asked Mr Moody to call on her, just to make sure she was all right. You know the consequence.' His eyes had moistened. He took out a handkerchief and wiped them.

Delicately steering him back to the matter of most interest, Red said, ‘Presumably, the KGB took possession of your memoir before they murdered the publisher and set fire to his office. And they'll almost certainly have got the original out of the Swiss bank.'

‘That can be taken as definite,' Hess bleakly agreed.

‘They murdered three people to stop it being published. And now they want to question you.'

He treated the prospect lightly. ‘Let them. I'm just a crazy old man, an embarrassment to everyone.'

Red was determined to pin him down. ‘Come clean with me, Herr Hess. You want the world to know the truth. It was a brave idea to put it in a book, but it's failed, like the peace mission. What can you do now, except tell me the secrets you wrote in your book? My prospect of getting out of here alive isn't too rosy, but I'm still the best bet you have.'

Hess deliberated for longer than Red would have cared to estimate. Any moment there could be a shout from the chief warder that the Soviet guards were at the cell-block door.

He wagged a finger at Red. ‘You
will
get out of here.'

‘I'll do my damnedest.'

‘There is writing paper on the shelf if you want it. And a pencil.'

‘There isn't time. Just tell me about your dealings with the British.'

Hess took a breath. ‘The Führer wished to make peace with England after the defeat of France. Will you believe that?'

‘Of course. It would have suited him. He announced it in the Reichstag, didn't he?'

Hess gave Red an approving look. ‘We made secret approaches to Churchill.'

That was it! Red felt goose-bumps rising on his skin. ‘Through Dublin?'

‘And other neutral cities. Churchill's public statements were antagonistic to Germany, but secretly a peace formula was under discussion for many weeks. It was taking too long. The Führer wanted to bring the talks to a positive conclusion.'

‘Because of Barbarossa, the plan to invade Russia?'

A penetrating stare, which gradually became vacuous. At this, of all times, his concentration was going!

Red prodded the memory. ‘Britain was to join with Germany in the invasion of Russia, is that right? To defeat the Bolsheviks, eh, Herr Hess? That must have had some appeal to Churchill.'

He snapped out of his reverie. ‘Together we would have succeeded.'

‘And carved up Europe, Asia and Africa between you?'

Hess shook his head slowly. ‘That is a crude interpretation. The important thing was to neutralise the Bolshevik threat. Then there would have been no cold war, no iron curtain.'

‘And no divided Germany,' said Red.

He was in full flow again. ‘Unhappily, Churchill was dragging his heels – is that the English expression? For many months, I had been preparing to fly secretly to Britain to talk with Churchill, to demonstrate our serious wish for peace with Britain. You see?'

Red nodded.

‘Then I received an alarming intelligence report. General de Gaulle, the leader of the French in exile, had learned from his agents about the secret peace talks and demanded of Churchill that he repudiate them.'

‘De Gaulle!' echoed Red. It sounded like an expression of surprise, but was one of satisfaction, tempered by sadness, that Dick Garrick, who had died pursuing the theory of de Gaulle's involvement, must have been justified in his theory.

Hess was speaking fluently now, as if to give the lie to the stories that he was crazed or senile. ‘You must understand that Churchill was first and foremost a politician. He could have sold the idea of peace to the British people. He intended to, I assure you. But he insisted that it had to be revealed to them at precisely the right moment, when it would not appear like a defeat.'

That had the authentic Churchillian note. The test of leadership was whether the people followed you, and no one had mastered it better than he.

Hess continued, ‘But to de Gaulle it was an outrage, the worst of all crimes – collaboration. He threatened to break the news prematurely. So you see, Churchill was no longer in control. A terrible blow to our hopes.'

‘When did this happen?'

‘Early in May.'

Red frowned. ‘But you still went ahead with the flight?'

‘And almost succeeded.' He drew himself up straight and gave a fleeting impression of the spare-time flier who had piloted that Messerschmitt further than the Luftwaffe had believed possible. ‘You see, I had good information that there were members of the titled class and right-wing politicians who favoured a peace deal. The deal with Churchill was aborted, but these were powerful men, Mr Goodbody. So powerful that they could have overthrown Churchill and ignored de Gaulle. I flew to Britain to make contact with them and rally support. As you explained, by sheer chance Churchill was informed too soon for my plan to succeed.' He turned away. ‘And that is why I have been held in prison for forty-three years.'

‘You blame the British?'

‘Powerful, privileged men.'

‘Most of them must be dead by now.'

He flapped his hand dismissively. ‘But their reputations have to be protected. Do I have to tell you how the British establishment operates?'

‘Their names, Herr Hess?'

‘You will learn them.'

From the corridor, Petitjean called out, ‘Someone is coming! I can hear them coming!'

Hess stiffened. ‘What is happening?'

‘We've got to be quick. You talked about a risk you wanted me to take.'

He blinked and looked bewildered.

‘Come on!' Red urged him. ‘What is it that you want me to do? Is there someone to contact?'

The focus sharpened again. ‘My adjutant of the old days.'

With a facility that would have done credit to Dick Garrick, Red said at once, ‘Pintsch?'

‘No. He is dead, I think. The younger man, Leischner. Lives in Rominter Allee … or something like that.' He looked distractedly around him, then slipped a gold ring from his finger. ‘Put this on. Give it to Leischner. He put out his hand and grasped Red's arm in a fierce grip. ‘You bear the trust of an entire generation.'

Hess's eyes, fervently fixed on Red, said much more. The
Stellvertreter
was fulfilling his last duty to the Reich he had helped to found. In his own mind, he was uncompromised, unbought, loyal to the end. It was the triumph of the will.

Red despised the system Hess was determined to vindicate. But he respected the man himself for his resolution and his personal courage.

‘If I get out, I'll do what I can,' Red told him.

The pale eyes glittered. The old man turned away and sat on his bed.

Red snatched up the gun.

Petitjean shouted, ‘It's the guard. You can hear their boots.'

Red joined him at the cell-block door and listened. ‘Can we stop them opening this door?'

‘Impossible.'

‘Is there any other way out?'

‘Only the elevator down to the prison garden where he takes his exercise.'

‘Where's that?'

‘You get into it from the far end of the cell-block. The access is through the cell opposite his. We keep it locked.'

‘Have you got the key?'

‘Yes, but it would be certain death. There is a watchtower with a full view of the garden, and the garden is sealed off by a three-metre wall.'

‘Would you give me the key, chief?'

‘They will all have been instructed to shoot.'

‘The key.'

Petitjean took the bunch from his pocket and unfastened one. He was shaking his head. ‘If there was a possibility, I would tell you to take it, but this is suicidal.'

‘Delay them as long as you can. You can tell them I'm with Hess.' Red ran back to Hess's cell and unbolted it.

The old man was still sitting on the bed. He looked up, frowning.

‘I'm borrowing this, OK?' Red told him, picking the overcoat off the hook below the bookshelves.

Hess gestured with a movement of his shoulders that he had no objection. He showed that he had an immediate understanding of what Red was about to attempt. ‘My old hat is in the pocket.'

‘Great.'

‘These days I walk slowly, and look at the ground.'

‘Thanks.'

‘On the left side of the garden at this end are some bushes growing against the wall. That is the way I would choose. The wall actually forms the side of some disused workshops, one storey high.'

‘If I get out—'

‘I'll hear about it,' said Hess with a nod. He got up and picked a brown paper bag from the lowest shelf. ‘Put this in your pocket.'

‘What's in it?'

‘Breadcrumbs. For the birds.'

The overcoat was faintly military in style and reached to just above Red's ankles. He took the hat from the pocket and tried it on. It was a soft, grey pillbox-type cap that effectively covered his hair. He closed the door on Hess and crossed the corridor. There was shouting from the other end.

He unlocked the cell door opposite and let himself in, closing the door behind him. The lift stood open, so he stepped in, pulled the gate shut and pressed the button.

Nothing happened.

It occurred to him that they could have cut off the power supply. He stepped out again, spotted a switch on the wall, flicked it down, and heard a reassuring hum from the lift mechanism.

Inside again, and it responded at once.

He was conveyed down to ground level, wondering whether an armed guard awaited him. He had decided against bringing the sub-machine gun with him.

When the lift stopped, he paused a moment to compose himself, turning around to face the side from which he would make his exit. He took a long breath and slowly opened the gate.

No one was waiting outside. Directly ahead, positioned at the centre of the high garden wall some sixty yards away, was a flat-roofed concrete watchtower with a clear line of fire.

With his eyes down and his hands thrust deep into the pockets, Red started his impersonation of Rudolf Hess at exercise, shuffling towards the path around which the world's loneliest man had plodded since 1947. He tried to picture the grey figure in the film sequence that Cedric had shown the team during that now-remote weekend at Henley.

He joined the main path and turned right, in the anti-clockwise direction he had seen Hess take in the film. A 210-metre circuit. It took him towards the tallest tree in Spandau, an eighty-foot poplar that Dönitz had planted as a sapling soon after the seven prisoners had arrived there.

Mastering the impulse to hurry the routine, he stopped to scatter a few crumbs to some sparrows. He kept his eyes down, certain that he was being observed from the watchtower, knowing that the path would take him to within yards of its base. Then he resumed his slow progress. If something in his movement were to cause suspicion in the tower, his hope was that the Soviet guard up there would be in two minds about using his gun. To any young soldier on guard, the risk of mistakenly killing the world's most famous prisoner would be a nightmarish prospect.

So Red's slow steps took him into the shadow of the twenty-foot high red-brick wall that surrounded the prison, past overgrown, weed-infested flower-beds that had once been kept in immaculate order by Hitler's architect, Albert Speer, and breathlessly beneath the watchtower. A few yards on, the path veered left. Red raised his eyes enough to get his first look at the bushes Hess had mentioned. To reach them, he would have to leave the path and cross twenty-five yards of open grass. However he attempted it, that guard would know at once that something irregular was happening.